“Who?”
She spoke briefly to her desk. Along with their missing craft, rotating, fully formed images of the unaccounted-for trio appeared above the projection surface.
“You know nothing about any of these individuals, or their vehicles?”
Turning to face each other, the AAnn conversed briskly in their own language. Their hisses and clicks were accompanied by a vigorous semaphoring of hands. Once again, it was Thessu who spoke. For the first time since the conversation had commenced, Matthias had the feeling that her visitors were honestly mystified.
“We know nothing of the oness of whom you sspeak. Why would you think we might have knowledge of them or their whereaboutss?”
“The human bioprospector’s disappearance was accompanied by the complete failure of his emergency instrumentation. The same is true of those who were sent into the southern Viisiiviisii to bring him back. One such failure verges on the unprecedented. Two such failures, occurring as they did one right after another, constitute an implausible coincidence. My people have been forced to consider the possibility that both craft were tampered with deliberately. The question is: To what end?”
Jallrii switched his scaled tail back and forth, smacking it several times against the floor. “Not thiss end, Adminisstrator.” The AAnn were known to have a sense of humor, albeit one that was singular in nature and rarely experienced by outsiders.
“You are implying, I think,” declared Thessu, “that not only may the dissappearancess of which you sspeak be in ssome way connected to uss, but that we perssonally may ssomehow be connected with them.” Eyes that verged on the hypnotic bored into her own, compelling her to blink. “How in the namess of the Four Wellss of Perdition could the dissappearance of ssome thickheaded human and ssimpleminded nativess in the unexplored Viisiiviisii be of the sslightesst benefit to my colleague and mysself, far less to the Empire?”